Peter Sinclair: Facts tickle funny bones

By PETER SINCLAIR

For me, the most rewarding aspect of the internet isn't always the news and information you unearth, rewarding though these may be.

Very often it's your own reflection in the mirror it holds up to the human face; the way it surprises us with ourselves. I'm thinking specifically of serendipitous delights like Yahoo's latest inspiration, its Most-Emailed Content.

Listing the 20 most-forwarded stories and photos from Yahoo News in the previous six hours, this cool idea has become a cult hit for news junkies.

And, because we're human, it's often the factoids as much as the facts — the things which strike our fancy or tickle our funny-bones.

As I write, the most-emailed story of this mid-morning, sent 512 times, is "Earnhardt Dies After Daytona Wreck." Yet the tragic death of US speedway legend Dale Earnhardt only just overshadows "Woman Pesters Ex-Lover with 1000 Calls a Day" — the vengeful use of the phone by a jilted Hong Kong woman who for three years remorselessly hit the redial button in pursuit of a man called Cheung who had (not before time, one feels) broken off their relationship.

To be quite certain he got the message, she threw in about 500 faxes a day as well ...

I'm not sure what this tells us about human nature, but it certainly suggests that Hong Kong Telecom does not charge on a per-call basis.

The third most popular story (forwarded 263 times) confronts the challenging question "Is Menstruation Obsolete?". If so, one can only wonder why women put up with it for so long.

"Has Hannibal Lecter claimed another victim?" (317 sends). Friends of Anthony Hopkins say playing the role twice may have affected the Academy Award-winner's mind. Has he started eating them?

Meanwhile, police in Kentucky were looking for a customer who succeeded in paying for a $US2 ice cream with a fake $200 bill bearing a picture of President George W. Bush and a depiction of the White House with a sign on the lawn saying "We like broccoli." And yes, he was given change. In an hour, more than 200 surfers had shared this little gem from Reuters.

And we can tilt the mirror slightly over at Lycos (known as Terra Lycos since being gobbled up by Spaniards late last year —) where Aaron Schatz uses the web to predict pop-culture trends.

Cultural viruses are forever wriggling into the human brain, where some of them lodge and flourish for a time before wriggling out again. So it's news ahead of the news at the Lycos 50 Daily Report, where Aaron ("the Sultan of Search") is continuously identifying new caprices.

Britney Spears is about to disappear from the radar, according to this page, while Pamela Anderson's breast de-enhancement has apparently enlarged her following.

DragonBall is burning out, a victim of its own popularity; the PlayStation 2 craze is wilting; Harry Potter may have seen the best of it; it looks like no one's going to stop smoking marijuana soon.

But anticipating the future is an imperfect science. When I visited Lycos, Dale Earnhardt was still among the living, climbing slowly but ...

Links:

Yahoo's most emailed content

Hong Kong Telecom

Third most popular story

Terra Lycos

Lycos 50 Daily report

Britney Spears

Pamela Anderson

Dragonball

Playstation 2

Harry Potter

Marijuana anonymous


Peter Sinclair